City University of New York (CUNY)
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Master's Theses
City College of New York
2014
Elephant in the Dark
Eli Samuel
CUNY City College
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Samuel 1 Elephant in the Dark:
Science Fiction's Existential Use of the
Sublime, Grotesque, and Genremorphs
in
Shelley’s Frankenstein and Kubrick & Clarke’s 2001
Eli Samuel
Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the
degree of Master of Fine Arts at the City College of the City
University of New York.
December 8th, 2014
Samuel 2 Table of Contents
Introduction:
Science Fiction’s Existential Dilemma
3-7
Chapter One:
Literary Origins: From Supernaturalism to Science
8-15
Chapter Two:
Novums and the Negative Apocalypse
Cognitive Estrangement and the Monster Protagonist
16-22
22-28
Chapter Three:
The Kantian Sublime and Grotesque
29-38
Chapter Four:
Archetypal Psychology and Jungian Limitations
Genremorphs and Creation Anxiety
39-42
42-49
Conclusion:
Science Fiction and Slipstream
50-52
Samuel 3 Introduction:
Science Fiction’s Existential Dilemma
A group of blind men touch an elephant in the dark. However, they
are not familiar with the creature. In an effort to understand its complete
form, each one feels a different part, but only one part: one blind man
describes the tusk like a curved horn; another claims the trunk is like a live
tree branch; a third hugs a leg which he describes as a pillar. Yet, when the
men try to arrive at a consensus of the creature’s entirety, they completely
disagree. Their perspectives and conjectures render incompatible. This
parable traces a long oral tradition across cultures, and befittingly extends
to the formidable task of defining Science Fiction (SF).
The debate concerning the proper definition of SF is extensive.
Ironically, the inaugural edition of the The Encyclopedia of Science
Fiction (1979) by John Clute and Peter Nicholls gave over twenty
definitions1. By 1993 the editorial staff had only whittled the definitions
down to eleven, where that number remains today (Fowler 1). Most
surprisingly, Clute and Nicholls admit irresolution in their conclusion
regarding the definition of SF, stating:
“There is really no good reason to expect that a workable
definition of SF will ever be established. Historically, it grew from
the merging of many distinct genres, from utopias to space
1 Including Hugo Gernsback’s first description of ‘scientifiction’ which first appeared
Science Wonder Stories (June 1929) where he described SF as the “Jules Verne, H.G.
Wells and Edgar Allen Poe type of story—a charming romance intermingled with
scientific fact and prophetic vision…” Samuel 4 adventures. Instinctively, however, we may feel that if SF ever
loses its sense of fluidity of the future through basic conceptual
vagueness, then the center of its structure may implode.” (314)
While declaring SF will never have an established definition is
defeatist, the majority of current SF definitions are primarily
unsatisfactory for two reasons:
1) Most attempts to define SF can be too contrived, metaphorical,
and exhaustive; they only further complicate the definitive intent. For
instance, Robert Scholes is a Yale and Cornell-educated literary theorist
who attempted to substitute Science Fiction’s denomination in 1975 in his
academic essay, “Structural Fabulation.” In Scholes’ pursuit to broaden
the boundaries of what literature constituted the SF moniker, he defined
structural fabulation as:
“…a fiction radically discontinuous to our known world, modified
by an awareness of the universe as a system of systems, a structure
of structures.” (4)
While noble in aspiration, the definition fails to narrow SF’s objective,
constitution, and is bluntly an amorphous conception. Scholes’ structural
fabulation only elucidates SF as an alienated and orphaned genre, but not
as a distinct category with an established rubric.
2) SF definitions can be shallow, inconclusive, and often miss
something crucial. Firstly, one cannot say that SF is realism because it is
not limited to the methods of realistic description, plot devices, or
Samuel 5 characters. For opposing reasoning, SF cannot be classified as mythic
(which includes Fantasy and Epic poetry) since it does not structurally
operate in a synchronic or “timeless” dimension to preserve a specific
cultural or religious didacticism; SF operates in worlds that are not
absolute and where narrative variables change. Mythology’s repetitive
universe is often static, and therefore anti-empirical: it inherently adopts
an unreasonable, ironclad universe and refutes the scientific method
applied with SF (Panshin 3). Additionally, SF cannot be classified as
modern myth because it purposefully severs classical mythical ties. To
illustrate, Victor Frankenstein’s Monster can easily be viewed as an
evolution of the Golem: an animated anthropomorphic being created from
clay. However, the Golem is dumb while Frankenstein’s Monster is
distinctively depicted by Shelley to be more intelligent than its creator.
Nor is it fair to compare SF to Fantasy, where the latter genre disregards
the laws of the author's empirical world and escapes into an elementary,
collateral realm indifferent toward plausibility. Lastly, SF cannot be
purely described as ‘technological-scientific fiction’; this terminology
would be more aligned with the aims of a scientific essay, where the sole
purpose is hypothetical speculation without an accompanying narrative.
Jules Verne, for example, tends to fall into this trap of scientific pedagogy,
where his SF narratives are encumbered and diluted by voluminous, and
mostly anthropological observations.
Samuel 6 At its core, SF has typically been characterized as the
literature of “What if…” or as famed SF author, Isaac Asimov, declared as
a “literature of ideas.” Yet this conceit is as vague as the aforementioned
definitions. All literature is an extrapolation of an idea—all forms of
fiction depict “What if…” scenarios. Others have concluded SF composes
narratives of the future, but most SF is often set in the present or an
alternate history.2
SF may be difficult to define because it engages a problem of
singular genre classification: is SF a genre subset or does it command a
explicit narrative autonomy? Can SF be considered a Victorian Gothic
incarnation, or does its roots stem further back? When exactly did SF
become an independent genre? And how did SF, much like any budding
genre, garner its own umbrella?
The purpose of this essay is not solely to define a distinct
chronology of SF, but to systematize how the SF genre formed and
distinguished itself. To accomplish this, I will identify and analyze two of
the most cohesive, catalytic works which propelled the SF genre into selfsufficiency: Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel, Frankenstein; or, The Modern
Prometheus (i.e. Frankenstein), and the Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C.
Clarke 1968 film collaboration on 2001: A Space Odyssey (i.e. 2001).3 SF
2 This
can also be generically said for any fictional narrative, regardless of genre. 3 Written simultaneously, both 2001’s screenplay and novelization influenced each other
and were paralleled to match Kubrick’s ultimate production exhibited on screen; while
minor differences are apparent, the film’s screenplay and visuals will be cited to
encompass the seminal themes of this essay. Samuel 7 is a hyper-visualized medium, where a large percentage of its narrative,
unlike other genres, is dedicated to world building. Consequently, it only
seems appropriate to incorporate the cinematic aspect of SF. But both
works, in each narrative medium, are indubitably the most coherent forms
that all other SF works can aspire and be compared. Yet in order to
establish SF as an independent genre, I will first examine the derivation of
its conventions cannibalized from mythology, epic poetry, fantasy, the
Enlightenment and Romanticism movements, and gothic romance/horror.
After isolating and defining SF’s core tenets, which include empiricism
and Darko Suvin’s Cognitive Estrangement Theory, Shelley’s cautionary
story of creation is proven to inaugurate a new literary era. The genre then
extended its foothold with the cinematic achievement of Kubrick-Clarke’s
2001. Utilizing the existential use of stylistic devices, particularly the
grotesque and sublime, both works explore the impact and inclusion of
scientific perspectives in fiction. But most innovatively, these SF works
imbued the grotesque and the sublime conceits into self-reflective
archetypes neologized as ‘genremorphs.’ These genremorphs broke the
fourth wall to ruminate on SF’s agency, while subversively shepherded
readers through the genre’s strange new landscape, laws, and addressed
the authors’ own concerns.
Samuel 8 Chapter 1:
Literary Origins: From Supernaturalism to Science
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein arguably gestated the first coherent
and competent science-fictional form during the early 19th century. Most
scholars will concede that while Shelley’s well-documented intention was
crafting a horror story to spook and impress her bookish peers, she
inadvertently leaped into a new age of storytelling. She certainly
benefitted from the good luck of having parents who were intellectual
savants and to have married a great poet, Percy Shelley, with whose
influence allowed Frankenstein to slip amongst publishers favoring
Romanticist literature. Frankenstein was retroactively elevated by the
contextual, sociopolitical, and technological changes occurring at the time.
Scientific influences are blatant throughout the novel, which fused
Shelley’s canonical knowledge and her inquisitive preoccupation in
emerging science; it was a marriage that, above all else, challenged a
pervasive religious dogma in favor of scientific rationality.
SF Author and scholar, Brian Aldiss, presents the best case for
Shelley as SF’s first complete author in his authoritative history of the
genre, Billion Year Spree (reiterated in his updated, Trillion Year Spree).
He cites Shelley’s inclusions of Milton, Goethe, and Erasmus Darwin as a
conscious testimony that she is not just another Gothic novelist:
Samuel 9 We can see the Faustian theme is brought dramatically up to date,
with science replacing supernatural machinery… Frankenstein
touches not only science but man’s dual nature, whose inherited
ape curiosity has brought him both success and misery. (36)
Shelley’s tale, as Aldiss claimed, was a “Model-T SF drama with
philosophical interludes” (iv). Memorable epiphanies were coupled with
great naturalistic and narrative expanses, tundras, and other formidable
earthly forces. Shelley exercised her intuitive perception of science,
viewing it as a powerful entity, but also recognized the dangers of its
advancement if uncontrolled.
In this consideration, her writing was ingrained within the
quotidian mindset of people living and struggling to adapt to an
industrialized world, and how they feared losing control in a postindustrial
near-future. Shelley recognized that in order for the public consciousness
to adopt radically different doctrines, they must fully comprehend
scientific methodologies and its potential benefits.
Frankenstein incorporates many discoveries of the 17th, 18th, and
19th centuries, specifically the revolutionary discovery of electricity.
While Benjamin Franklin would be the most renowned polymath who
studied the scientific properties of electricity in the 1700s, other
innovators within the medical community attracted Shelley’s interest. She
particularly gravitated to the research on animal electricity conducted by
Luigi Galvani, a professor of Medicine and Anatomy at the University of
Samuel 10 Bologna. In 1786, Luigi Galvani discovered that severed frog’s legs
twitched when he conducted an electric charge to them (Krischel). Galvani
regarded these studies of animal electricity and dubbed its vital force
“Galvanism.” Galvani died in 1798, and his nephew, Giovanni Aldini,
Professor of Physics at the University of Bologna, continued to defend his
uncle’s interpretation of animal electricity. Between 1800 and 1810,
Aldini traveled through Europe (including Shelley’s hometown of Somers
Town, London) and performed electrical experiments on corpses. At the
Royal College of Surgeons in London, Aldini galvanized the body of John
Forster, a local inmate who had been executed for murder. Aldini
proceeded to connect electrodes to Forster’s body, where “the jaw began
to quiver, the adjoining muscles were horribly contorted, and the left eye
actually opened” (Hindle 17). An application of electrodes to the ear and
rectum “excited in the muscle[s] contractions much stronger than in the
preceding experiments, [so as] almost to give an appearance of reanimation.” (18). Shelley’s description of Frankenstein’s Monster’s
animation, which was published 15 years after Aldini’s account, is
remarkably similar. Yet Shelley used the concept of reanimation and
electricity to accentuate humanity’s duality, not as a shock and awe gambit
or an imaginary abomination.
Generally, scientific experiments are performed with altruistic
intentions in mind. Yet a reverse, commonly negative affect is nearly
always introduced. Just as science can end up creating dual reactions, say
Samuel 11 nuclear power for fission energy or the atomic bomb, electricity holds this
same dynamism more directly: electricity wields the power of magnetism,
negative and positive forces pulling away from each other. Shelley
appropriated electricity's duality to Frankenstein, most significantly to Dr.
Victor Frankenstein’s motives as they vacillated between magnanimous
and self-serving. Shelley established Victor as an informed wanderer
between worlds, transcending Victorian prudence into scientific
enlightenment, but not yet immune to encountering its perils.
While SF clearly borrows elements from mythology, fantasy, and
epic poetry4, SF channels the spirit of empirical knowledge with what
English professor and SF anthologist, Eric S. Rabkin, termed “the
scientific habits of mind” (3). Victor Frankenstein valued empirical
knowledge for its altruistic means to “…search [for] the philosopher’s
stone and the elixir of life… banish disease from the human frame, and
render man invulnerable…” (34). But philosophy would fail Victor in
producing concrete results, so we follow him as he searches elsewhere.
Shelley purposefully dedicates a substantial portion of the text to establish
Victor’s scientific credibility and dedication to empiricism. Victor
transitions from metaphysics and philosophy, considered the “softer”
sciences, to natural law (specifically chemistry). Subtextually through
Victor Frankenstein, Shelley proposes:
4 Both
Frankenstein’s subtitle references Greek Mythology and its epigraph quotes
Adam’s post-fall lamentation of God in Milton’s Paradise Lost Samuel 12 In other studies you go as far as others have gone before you, and
there is nothing more to know; but in a scientific pursuit there is
continual food for discovery and wonder. (47)
Victor “…delighted in investigating the facts relative to the actual world,”
and believed true intellectual transformation “…required [one] to
exchange chimeras of boundless grandeur for realities…” (31, 43). This
was the only way to “pioneer a new way, explore unknown powers, and
unfold to the world the deepest mysteries of creation” (4). Additionally,
Shelley recruits Victor’s Professor of Natural Philosophy at Ingolstadt, M.
Krempe, to encourage his student in dismissing alchemy, mysticism, and
antiquated spiritual teachers who “…promised impossibilities and
performed nothing,” and to instead:
“…Pour over the microscope, penetrate into the recesses of
nature…command the thunders of heaven, mimic the earthquake,
and even mock the invisible world with its own shadows.” (44)
But this evolutionary intellectualism is not without its obstacles. Shelley
cleverly insinuates that new modes of thought are challenging to accept,
and uses treacherous metaphors throughout the novel to illustrate:
The ascent is precipitous, but the path is cut into continual and
short windings, which enable you to surmount the perpendicularity
of the mountain…The path, as you ascend higher, is intersected by
ravines of snow, down which stones continually roll from above…
(110, underline emphasized)
Samuel 13 Although Victor owed much of his investigative zeal to Cornelius
Agrippa and Albertus Magnus, he had to evolve his thought processes
when comprehending the modern demythologized world. At the beginning
of the 19th century, both Shelley and Victor harnessed the fundamental
logic of Descartes and invested in the forward thinking of Erasmus
Darwin whose experiments also inspired Shelley’s novel. Furthermore,
Shelly used the mathematical worldview of Galileo and the gravitational
physics of Newton to bring brought the mythic, spiritual protagonists of
the past crashing to reality.
The transformation of Victor and Shelley’s ideologies catalyzed by
a shifting sociopolitical landscape, one that was drastically influencing
literature ever since the 1600s. Scientific advances within Europe and
America sponsored new beliefs in natural law, confidence in human
reason, and an increased application of scientific methodologies to society,
politics, and—in a ruinous manner—to religion. Previously unthinkable
revolutions ravaged England from 1642 to 1651 (English Civil War) and
much of Europe in 1688 (The Nine Years’ War); kings with divine rule
were threatened with execution or exile, and the Roman Catholic Church
was reduced to merely wielding a theoretical authority (Panshin 8).
Soonafter, the Age of Reason and Enlightenment movements mobilized
intellectual change by opposing abuses in church and state, and debunking
long held superstitions with a newly held faith in empiricism. Yet amidst
the scientific rationalization of nature and the Industrial Revolution, the
Samuel 14 second half of the 18th century through the 19th century strayed, cultivating
an artistic revolt that was embodied in Romanticism. Many artists and
authors sought to emphasize human emotion in relation to the sublimity of
untamed nature. This was considered to be a direct opposition to scientific
rationalization and the Industrial Revolution, as Romantic literature
implored its readers to suspend belief for the importance of selfexamination. Supernatural and medieval tropes began to creep back into
the empirical world, becoming known as gothic romance/horror.
In order to escape the urban sprawl and industrial confines, Gothic
literature featured remote settings and brooding protagonists struggling
against anomalies of nature, much like Victor does against his creation
(Brantlinger 4). But does that mean Shelley’s Frankenstein is a Gothic
manifestation and not purely SF, or is it an unconscious cross-fertilization
of the two: is it truly the “Model-T” of its time as Aldiss claims, where the
components existed before, yet it was Shelley first to assemble a complete,
pioneering form?
According to SF critic and Zagreb University professor, Darko
Suvin, while Shelley launched Frankenstein in the tradition of a Gothic
story—mainly Victor’s hideous creation, his attempted usurping of God,
and the corruption of Nature— it’s the Monster’s eventual rise to
sentience and conscious acknowledgement of his failed social assimilation
that is diametrically opposed to a purely Gothic point of view. Suvin, who
holds the first doctoral degree in Science Fiction Studies, postulates the
Samuel 15 Monster’s narrative moves Frankenstein away from the Gothic and toward
SF because it identifies the Monster as not something supernatural,
spiritual, or mythological, but more complex, intelligent, and rational.
Suvin views Gothic literature and SF as directly antithetical. Firstly, SF
utilizes plausible novelties or inventions called “novums” to authenticate
the story’s potentiality, while Gothic literature is “anti-cognitive.” Gothic
literature, unlike SF, aligns physical laws with supernatural feats. Not only
is this incongruous, but both the concept of cognition and the supernatural
are treated as having equal merit. Suvin contends that SF does not abide
by this pairing. SF values cognition—that is, testable knowledge or valid
logic—above all else, especially the supernatural. With Shelley at the oars,
Frankenstein acts as a ferry between this change in value by departing
from the Gothic to SF throughout the trajectory of the novel.
Samuel 16 Chapter 2:
Novums and the Negative Apocalypse
Suvin advocates that “SF is distinguished by the narrative
dominance or hegemony of a fictional ‘novum’ (i.e. novelty, innovation)
validated by cognitive logic” (Suvin 3). The central novum of any SF
work has to be within the bounds of scientific reason. If a work contains a
novum outside “cognitive logic” (i.e. a magical flute that resurrects dead
unicorns), it would be incorrect to classify the work as SF. This
historically unprecedented “new thing” intervenes in the routine course of
social life and changes the trajectory of history. Every SF text supplies
fictive novums and responses to them. We can observe this in
Shelley/Victor Frankenstein’s inspiration of Darwin’s emerging theories,
as well as Verne’s Nautilus in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.
SF doesn’t allow inexplicable marvels, fantastic transcendences, or devils
or demons. While an SF work may not necessarily have to explain
everything within the text, its logical narrative equips the reader with
enough reality-based evidence to address the novum in question. The SF
novum, in essence, is a stone thrown into the pool of social existence, and
each text excogitates the ripples that ensue. The stone may come from
another world like a meterorite, or it may rise as a man-made construction.
Even if the novum does emerge from human origins, its impact on the
world is as if it were alien. Because SF novums are semi-fictional, their
Samuel 17 meanings are constructed by the fictive worlds response to them, but also
by the reader’s parallel reconstruction in reality according to the current
science available. By trying to understand these novums, belief systems
become disturbed and dislodged, which forces paradigm shifts in modern
thinking. Thusly, this is the ultimate intent of each novum.
Each SF novum is a compound of at least two types of what Suvin
deems radical change. The first change usually appears as a physicalmaterial novelty: something that is structurally perceptible, albeit a
tangible object or an institution. This physical change is then
complemented by an ethical response: a change in values and mores. Each
of these novum-types (material and ethical) symbiotically influences the
other and is “an engine for providing new concepts; they are a negative
apocalypse,” (Ronay Jr. 55) or more commonly referred to as “futureshock”: a difficulty in older or antiquated societies to adapt and evolve
alongside techno-scientific advancement.
A further defining feature of SF is the role the novum plays in the
narrative: it must function as the nucleus for the whole work, the center
from which the plot, structure, and style flow. The novum, Suvin
formulates, “is so central and significant that it determines the whole
narrative logic” (Suvin 4). It is this special type of novum, one validated
by cognitive logic and the central role it plays, which defines a work as
SF. Author and early adopter, H.G. Wells, remarks further:
Samuel 18 Anyone can think up inside out people, antigravity, or worlds in
the shape of dumbbells. Interest arises when all of this is conveyed
in everyday language and all other marvels are simply swept away.
Where anything can happen nothing is interesting. The reader must
accept the rules of the game, and the author, insofar as tact permits,
must exert every effort so that the reader can ‘feel at home’ with
his fantastic hypothesis. With the help of a probable supposition he
must compel in the reader a wholehearted concession and continue
the story as long as the illusion is maintained….He must take the
details from everyday reality….in order to preserve the strict truth
of the initial fantastic premise, for any superfluous invention going
beyond its boundaries gives the whole work an aura of senseless
contrivance and fantasy. (Ronay Jr. 63)
There’s certainly not an important text earlier than Frankenstein
that contains “every major formal characteristic” and succeeds in utilizing
a practical SF novum (Freedman 2). Whether Frankenstein is the product
of a ghost story contest among authors, a judicious response to advancing
technology and the Industrial Revolution, the anxiety of motherhood, or
Shelley’s subconscious lamentation of her dead son, William (whose
double is murdered by the Monster in the novel), it is a text which
established the blueprint for SF. Yet the genre in the nineteenth century
had a disappointing dearth of success, both in terms of replication and
mass appeal. Those who were retroactively praised and inducted to the
Samuel 19 founding family of SF, including Jules Verne and H.G. Wells, very rarely
produced work that definitively molded to the SF tenets Shelley put forth.
They often began well enough, but would fail to be as competent as their
predecessor.
Jules Verne attempted to break creative constraints by infusing
realism and exhaustive science with wondrous narrative, but almost to a
fault. Verne deliberately aimed to instruct and enlighten his reader through
a series of fictional journeys beyond his homeland, but he embodied a
future anthropologist more so than a narrative storyteller. Twenty
Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, part of Jules Verne's vast corpus of
novels (Voyages Extraordinaires) written over a forty-year period from
1863-1905, quintessentially chronicled changing worldviews and
entertained new social, scientific, and political possibilities opened up by
progressive attitudes. Captain Nemo embodied the nineteenth century's
fascination with the machine and its miraculous power to shrink the globe,
enable communication, facilitate construction, or in some cases,
precipitate destruction (Unwin 5).
However, Verne relied heavily on written scientific sources; he
perhaps felt compelled to match each fiction with fact, which often
overwhelmed his writing. Verne’s scientific documentation certainly
reshaped the storytelling process like it did Shelley, differentiating it from
the canon before him, but devolved with disproportionate descriptions of
marine life or mechanical obsessions. For Verne, he couldn’t quite strike
Samuel 20 the same balance as Shelley. Science is paramount to character-story
immersion, vocalized through one of Captain Nemo’s many orations: “The
sea is everything…you and your companions are nothing to me but the
passengers of the Nautilus" (Verne 157).
Not only did the extreme realism of Verne’s discourse neutralize
its fictional status, his novums were not at all that innovative. William
Butcher, a Verne scholar, stated in forward to an Oxford University Press
printing of 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea:
Verne is not a science fiction writer: most of his books contain no
innovative science, and what it does, is bombastically encumbered.
Verne himself was categorical: ‘I am not in any way the inventor
of submarine navigation. It had long existed in many mythical
derivatives.’ He even claimed he was ‘never specifically interested
in science,’ only in using it to create dramatic stories in exotic
parts; and indeed his reputation as a founding father of science
fiction has led to a major obfuscation of his literary merits. (4)
The introduction to Butcher’s translation of Voyage to the Center of the
Earth makes a matching claim, insisting:
In Verne’s case, if a genre classification really is necessary, he
falls into that of fantasy and adventure. But in no case can he be
considered a science fiction writer. His logic is capricious, his
characters happenstance. (vi)
Samuel 21 Butcher goes on to cite an additional example in From The Earth to the
Moon (1865), where Verne haphazardly propels his space travellers to
outer space by a gigantic cannon, which surely would’ve squashed them
flat upon such acceleration necessary to break our atmosphere. While the
novel explores the notion of space travel, it fails to succeed in producing
either type of novum: the plausible, material novelty or the radical ethical
change it’d initiate.
Wells, by contrast, modeled his worlds less on exploration than on
analogy with experimentation. Yet he too struggled to strike the right
balance between science and fiction. His protagonists usually do not have
any idea what they’re getting involved in, and have few skills for dealing
with the novum generated. The Time Traveller of The Time Machine
(1895) lands in the year 802,701 by chance, not estimation, and Bedford
and Cavor of First Men on the Moon (1901) have no useful knowledge of
where they’ve arrived. Wells’ tales, above all, build on logic by
desperation, not premeditation. His experiments are chaotically realized,
and thus have no inherent scientific methodology.
The green comet of H.G. Wells’ In the Days of the Comet (1906) is
another prime example: Although the tale begins in a particularly realistic
mood, depicting class relations within a small town in late Victorian
England more sharply than in Wells’ other romances, the physics of the
comet and its effects are unexplored. A contemporary reader of
apocalyptic fantasy might recognize the story as an imitation of Camille
Samuel 22 Flammarion’s spiritual comet in “La Fin du Monde” (1893), which
exhibits similar scientific shallowness. Like Flammarion, Well uses the
comet as a pretext for a tale of social and moral redemption. However, the
result is an incoherent narrative trying to find its way through fuzzy
romance, moral fantasy, and political parable. (Ronay Jr. 55).
Orbiting other SF works in Victorian Gothic literature, certain texts
sought to exploit novums and failed from the offset. Edward BulkerLytton’s The Coming Race (1871), a perfect companion piece to H.G.
Well’s The Time Machine in terms of societal introspection, highlights the
use of an energy force referred to as “Vril.” Compared to Robert Louis
Stevens’ Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886), which uses
chemical substances to aid his transformative disassociation, the Vril is
never given a detailed development or assigned an origin. Vril fails as a
SF novum because it aligns itself with fantastical feats: an all-powering
healing substance and can reanimate matter inexplicably, unlike the welldocumented electrical creation of Frankenstein’s Monster.
Cognitive Estrangement and the Monster Protagonist
Aside from a validated novum, Darko Suvin insisted on SF’s need
to provide a suitable alternative to the real world that could test these “new
things” and their influence. Novums required a fictional world parallel to
ours, but equally plausible. For instance, a subgenre in SF is Steampunk,
Samuel 23 where in a parallel universe steam-powered machinery persevered over
electrical and combustion-based technology. Alternative to our current
world, Steampunk’s water-based technology restructures an entire
existence and aesthetic that is cognitively divergent from ours. Suvin
perceived this as a “developed oxymoron, a realistic irreality” that has
since been referred to as “The Cognitive Estrangement Theory.” In his
1982 essay, Narrative Logic, Ideological Domination, and the Range of
SF, he states:
SF is a literary genre whose necessary and sufficient conditions are
the presence and interaction of estrangement and cognition, and
whose formal device is an imaginative framework alternative to
the author’s empirical environment.
(Suvin 5)
While there is estrangement, that is to say an inherent displacement from
the real world in all fiction, SF distinguishes its estrangements as
scientifically plausible—or cognitive, meaning to “be knowable.”
Cognitive estrangement is a process of augmenting our empirical reality to
a logical extreme, and investigating current scientific theory and
anomalies through a narrative process. The cognitive estrangements are
not conjured, but derived from real world discoveries. They merely
accommodate potentialities yet to be realized. This approach is adopted
from the scientific method, where necessary experimentation of new
phenomena includes adding and removing variables (much like Victor
Samuel 24 does in his creation of the Monster with excavated cadaver parts). Shelley
endorses this methodology through Victor’s initial account aboard Captain
Walton’s ship:
I believe that the strange incidents connected with it will afford a
view of nature, which may enlarge your faculties and
understanding. You will hear of powers and occurrences, such as
you have been accustomed to believe impossible; but I do not
doubt that my tale conveys in its series internal evidence of the
truth of the events of which it is composed. (25, emphasis
underlined)
Victor Frankenstein’s human perspective is commonplace to us,
but the Monster affords a different view of nature. Victor represents the
current worldview on the precipice of change, and the Monster represents
the logical extreme. While the electrical galvanization and the subsequent
Monster are the novums which Frankenstein revolves, the Monster truly
employs cognitive estrangement by commenting on local customs,
emotions, wildlife, and scenery on his travels that are ordinary to the
reader, yet strange to him.
For example, the Monster’s bewilderment with snow illuminates
an element of weather that is an “odd mutation” of water, but is a generic
transformation to Victor Frankenstein and the reader. There is nothing odd
or miraculous about water’s transformative properties. This defamiliarization closely relates to Darko Suvin’s cognitive estrangement,
Samuel 25 where a central protagonist “confronts a set normative system…with a
point of view or intent of implying a new set of norms” (Morgan 3). In the
Monster, we have both a physical novum, a radical ethical change, and a
cognitive estranged setting.
More so, Shelley structurally alters the novel through cognitive
estrangement by appointing several protagonists. While Frankenstein
begins with conventional human characters like Captain Robert Walton,
who readers will initially appoint the novel’s protagonist, the role is then
juggled to Victor Frankenstein and ultimately passed to his unnamed
Monster; perchance unnamed since his perspective is deemed
unidentifiable. Three travel narratives are presented instead of just one:
Walton’s Artic exploration, the Monster’s wild wanderings, or
Frankenstein’s scientific journey. Yet the Monster’s narrative occupies
Volume 2 as the core of the novel, comprising chapters 3-8 of the nine
chapters total.
Shelley’s frame narrative highlights the Monster as our main
protagonist whom we should sympathize, which is a very strange and
inverted request to ask of a Gothic reader. Those who first
approached Frankenstein through Gothic conventions were predisposed to
see the Monster as Victor’s doppelganger, an extension of Victor rather
than an independent entity. Doubling was a notable trait of Gothic
literature, but by telling his own story, the Monster claims agency of an
individual protagonist. Shelley equips the Monster with an original
Samuel 26 identity rather than a doppelganger façade and presents him as more than a
scant externalization of Victor Frankenstein’s existential struggle. The
most effective result of the embedded narrative is that the Monster dictates
his own story: he is allotted a voice, granting the reader access to his
thought and feelings in his most vulnerable and deplorable moments.
Like emerging SF, the Monster’s solitude stems from being the
only creature of his kind in existence and from being shunned by
humanity. He senses a woeful lack of social identity (in addition to his
namelessness) and a lack of interaction with others. It’s only after
watching the cottagers, learning to speak and understand the language
perfectly, the Monster is able vocalize his situation. Deformed and alone,
similar to SF, the Monster’s status and agency is unknown: “Was I then a
monster,” he asks, “a blot upon the earth, from which all men fled, and
whom all men disowned?” (109). Victor, too, is an outsider, as he is soon
alienated from friends, family, and the rest of society. Shelley aligns
Victor and the Monster’s estranged accounts throughout the novel. Both
characters allude to Paradise Lost as they try to understand their identities
and altered perspectives. The Monster goes as far to compare himself to
Satan and Adam, demonic and human:
“Like Adam, I was created apparently united by no link to any
other being in existence…but many times I considered Satan as the
fitter emblem of my condition; for often, like him, when I viewed
Samuel 27 the bliss of my protectors, the bitter gall of envy rose within me.”
(124)
Both Victor and the Monster are emotional, sensitive, cognizant of
nature’s power, and concerned with the dangers of knowledge. They are
not much different than the common man, except that they teeter on
extreme outcomes. In fact, the similarity of their tones arises from the
filtering inherent in the layered narrative: the Monster speaks through
Victor, Victor through Walton, and Walton ultimately speaks through the
genre-newborn Shelley.
Estranged herself, Shelley discernibly identified with both Victor
and the Monster. She was a “new” writer with little recourse to separate
from her past without scrutiny. At the time she wrote Frankenstein,
Shelley (then Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin) was involved in scandal and
ridicule. At sixteen, she had eloped with then married poet Percy Bysshe
Shelley, joined by her teenaged half-sister, Jane Claire Clairmont. Jane
Claire may have also been intimate with Percy, and she later became Lord
Byron’s mistress, bearing him a daughter, Allegra, whom Byron placed in
an orphanage where the girl died at age five. At seventeen, Mary gave
premature birth to an unnamed daughter who died within days. The
following year, Mary’s other stepsister, Fanny Imlay, killed herself (also
rumored to have had an affair with Percy). That same year, Percy’s
pregnant wife, Harriet, committed suicide by jumping from a bridge over
the Serpentine in Hyde Park. And lastly, there is also evidence from
Samuel 28 Shelley’s journals that she identified with pariahs encountered in her
reading, like Milton’s aforementioned Satan and Coleridge’s Ancient
Mariner.
Therefore, with the creation of a “monster” or SF, Shelley depicted
something strange and new, yet oddly biographical. While the Monster
demonstrates greater intelligence than his creator, Shelley instructs us not
to fear him or a scientific, pragmatic perspective of the world. She depicts
the Monster as an amiable creature misunderstood by its appearance.
Witnesses throughout Frankenstein interpret the Monster as an antiEdenic evolution of man and an anthropomorphized adulteration of
utopian romances. Yet this is precisely why Shelley makes the Monster
hideous: he is physically grotesque to demote aestheticism and clash with
the Gothic-favored sublime.
Samuel 29 Chapter 3:
The Kantian Sublime and Grotesque
Though customarily correlated with the Gothic, Shelley introduces
sublime imagery as the Greek writer, Longinus, first explained in On the
Sublime (1712) to express “the power to provoke ecstasy” and to strike
one with grandeur of thought, emotion, and awe (3). This would
ultimately be the intent of SF, steered more toward plausibility. Through
sublimity, or the sublime, a person could encounter certain aesthetic
experiences when faced with immense beauty, terror, awe, and the
unknown (McKay 1). While the concept of the sublime evolved
aesthetically throughout the 18th and 19th century, it was almost always
embodied through nature’s vast stronghold, often difficult to comprehend
in its entirety, whether by towering mountains or desolate landscapes. The
sublime is not necessarily a hostile reaction to nature in general, but the
embodied moment when nature manifests itself in and beyond human
consciousness, producing emotions of futility. When Victor travels to the
summit of Montavert after creating and abandoning his Monster, he hopes
to revive his spirits and be momentarily consoled by nature’s sublime
spectacle.
Yet, while crossing the glacier, he spots the grotesque shape of the
Monster. The grotesque as a stylistic device countered the sublime;
grotesque imagery induced simultaneous empathy and disgust, something
Samuel 30 disharmonious to the status quo. While the sublime invited wonder, the
grotesque garnered aversion. The main difference between the sublime
and grotesque is directional: the sublime endorses panoptic perspectives
(ethereality, unimaginable expansion, etc.), while the grotesque tackles
more intimate phenomena that threaten physical aberration.
Like electricity that is both physical and ethereal, Shelley opposed
the sublime and grotesque against one another to symbolize the fragile
balance between creator and creation. Victor hurls threats at the Monster,
but the Monster responds eloquently, summoning his creator into a cave of
ice where he narrates the events of his life around a fire: the scene acts as
an ignited symbol of Victor’s edification. The old world, that is the natural
sublime world, is no longer sufficient in pacifying Victor when he knows
the Monster exists: “The rain depressed me; my old feelings recurred, and
I was miserable.” (84). Like Shelley, science’s encroachment into the
natural world is permanent and irreversible, as is the knowledge gained.
After realizing that he is horribly different from human beings, the
Monster blatantly cries out, “Of what a strange nature is knowledge! It
clings to the mind, when it has once seized on it, like a lichen on the
rock.” (51).
Of all contemporary genres, SF strongly evokes the particular
experience of the sublime defined by German philosopher, Immanuel
Kant. He depicted the sublime as the sense of temporal, spatial, and most
importantly, “mathematical infinitude” (Kant 89). The mathematical or
Samuel 31 techno-scientific view of the sublime entails a sense of awe and dread in
response to techno-scientific advancement. For Kant there are two kinds
of sublime response: the mathematical, followed by the dynamic. The
mathematical involves the experience of infinity, which in Frankenstein
was nature’s vast geography. But nature is also the dynamic type of
sublime in that while weather is predictable, major shifts occur
unexpectedly.
Shelley’s Monster meets both requisites of Kantian sublime:
mathematically born of Victor Frankenstein’s educated mind, and
dynamic in his evolving sense of autonomy—an inability to be controlled
by his creator. The Monster was both a “being of gigantic stature…about
eight feet in height and proportionately large” and later referred to as a
“catastrophe” whose ugliness is bemoaned by Victor:
"How can I describe my emotions at this catastrophe, or how
delineate the wretch whom with such infinite pains and care I had
endeavored to form? His limbs were in proportion, and I had
selected his features as beautiful. Beautiful! Great God!" (52)
What Victor intends to be beautiful and sublime ends in a
grotesque form. The Monster is unique in that he evokes both the sublime
and the grotesque. He transitions, like Shelley’s novel, from one state of
being to another; he is an interstitial creature. According to Kant, the
sublime state of mind must only be produced by “colossal representations
of nature,” but not “monstrous” as is Victor’s creation (Kant 91).
Samuel 32 Monstrous, in Kant and Shelley’s terms, would inhabit the grotesque as
being “inwardly destructive,” while the colossal presents “concepts almost
too great for any presentation…the intuition of an object almost too great
for our faculty of apprehension” (Kant 92). Strangely, the Monster is both
colossal and destructive. Despite the Monster being equally awe-inspiring
as nature, Shelley simultaneously associated and posed him against nature,
as remarked by Victor on the summit of Mont Blanc:
“During this short voyage I saw the lightning playing on the
summit of Mont Blanc in the most beautiful figures. The storm
appeared to approach rapidly, and, on landing, I ascended a low
hill, that I might observe its progress. It advanced; the heavens
were clouded, and I soon felt the rain coming slowly in large
drops, but its violence quickly increased…I perceived in the gloom
a figure which stole from behind a clump of trees near me…A
flash of lightning illuminated the object, and discovered its shape
plainly to me; its gigantic stature, and the deformity of its aspect
more hideous than belongs to humanity, instantly informed me that
it was the wretch, the filthy daemon, to whom I had given life.”
(72)
One elemental trait of grotesque beings is that they regularly contain at
least two bodies in one. A new body may be in the process of
metamorphosing out of an old one or may combine, conflate, or be trapped
in two forms. This is so for the Monster, both stylistically (sublime and
Samuel 33 grotesque) and aesthetically (impressive and deformed). This pedigree of
interstitial beings goes back to ancient monsters and mythic prodigies—
Scylla and Charybdis, Polyphemus, the Lamia, Pliny’s mouthless
Astemoi, the dogheaded Kynokephaloi, Lucius the Ass (Ronay Jr. 192).
Victor aspired for a sublime creation, to conquer and control nature, but
ended in a grotesque result that was beyond his dominion.
Paradoxically, it appears Shelley schemed Frankenstein as a
parody of the Kantian sublime, for everything in the Critique of Judgment
that Kant identifies as sublime, Shelley systematically inverts. She creates
a Kantian sublime creature, yet it diametrically harbors what Kant
prohibits: terror and monstrosity (Freeman 3). We witness this early on
when Victor at age fifteen, beholds a terrible thunderstorm: lightning
strikes a nearby "old and beautiful" oak (34). Victor declares: "I never
beheld anything so utterly destroyed" (35). Early on, Shelley foreshadows
the Monster’s future effect: the lightning destroys the tree as the monster
will destroy Victor, his family, and their old way of life. Nothing remains
but a "blasted stump" or the history of yesteryear. Shelley, from the very
onset, positions the sublime in Frankenstein to fall prey to the grotesque.
2001
In many respects, film is a more congenial medium for expressing
the Kantian sublime than literature. Cinema is designed as an immersive
Samuel 34 experience, commanding all senses but tactile. Its inherent purpose is
escapist, awe-inspiring, and is one of the only arenas that dually acts as
and represents technological environments: perfectly devised to discuss
and inhabit the Kantian sublime. SF critic and Romanian lecturer at ClujNapoca University, Cornel Robu, referred to Kubrick’s 2001 “the supreme
expression of the mathematical sublime in SF cinema” (Robu 4) for this
very reason.
While Shelley enforces terrestrial or geographical depictions to
produce the estranging effect of the Kantian sublime, that of
“mathematical infinitude,” Stanley Kubrick’s film, 2001: A Space Odyssey
ventures even further: into the celestial and beyond, as well as
technologically. Shelley’s earthly manifestations are rendered diminutive
in scale to Kubrick’s trek amongst the cosmos. On earth, Shelley
investigated science’s encroachment and governance of nature between
the Monster and Victor, whereas Kubrick employed all of space, the
pervasive AI of HAL 9000, and the omnipresent monoliths against
astronaut David Bowman.
However, The grotesque in 2001 is not aesthetically abhorrent like
Frankenstein’s Monster, but technologically overwhelming: it’s HAL’s
lack of corporeality and red-eyed embodiment that directly opposed and
threatened Bowman’s current way of life as science did agrarian existence.
Bowman’s future rests in the ubiquitous AI (artificial intelligence), which
ultimate turns on his superior like between the Monster does Victor. HAL,
Samuel 35 like Frankenstein’s Monster, is an interstitial being who boasts about
being “by any practical definition of the words, foolproff and incapable of
error.” Kubrick sardonically illustrates this during Bowman’s elementary
attempt at chess with the computer.
Bowman is relatively helpless without the aid of the novums
around him, as his entire journey is predicated upon resigning to the
mysterious monoliths challenging the astronaut’s philosophical and
intellectual compass. These rectangular novums are situated, since the
beginning of human history, to entice Bowman down a proverbial trail of
breadcrumbs to either unknown doom or enlightenment.
Kubrick demonstrates Bowman’s struggle between the human
imagination’s frustrated desire to expand and perceive infinity directly
without such aids. Outside of mathematical theory, humanity have no way
to firsthand witness infinity other than through two- and three-dimensional
visual representations. For instance, the manner in which black holes are
presented is through algorithmic formula and two- or three-dimensional
illustration. However, black holes are spatial anomalies that do not equate
to our current understanding of relativity or quantum theory, as it violates
our established rules of time and space.
The introductory “Dawn of Man” sequence first illustrates the
mathematical sublime in a primitive form: the earth here is a hostile Eden,
deadly and vast with no end in sight as Kubrick inserts endless vistas
stretching out from their horizon (Ronay Jr. 162). Yet disruptively, the
Samuel 36 monolith appears as a rectangular obstruction: a scientific encroachment
that leads to man’s aggressive, invasive, yet necessary evolution. Kubrick
sets the monolith amongst the land to insist it is an evolution of nature, not
just an extraterrestrial force. It imparts the knowledge of utilizing simple
tools, appropriating bones to bludgeon tapirs and rival primates, and
quickly elevates humanity to space conquest.
Moonwatcher, the primate leader, is placed in high heroic relief
like the introduction of the monolith as he casts the tapir bone skyward
upon the “Dawn of Man” conclusion. The following bone-to-satellite
match cut bypasses all human spiritual attainments, since Kubrick
disqualifies any advancement that cannot be interpreted technologically or
mathematically. This may be why many, if not all of the human characters
in 2001 are viewed as flagrantly pragmatic and apathetic: both Bowman
and his accompanying astronaut, Dr. Heywood Floyd, treat everything
from birthdays to space walks with equal indifference. Kubrick portrays
progress as not a measure of human emotions, moral or ethical victories,
but of the observable ability to extend human intelligence and
technological power (Ronay Jr. 166).
Even before viewers are introduced to mankind’s primate
ancestors, the “Dawn of Man” sequence is preceded by four entire minutes
of blackness. While many critics interpret this as the beginning of time, a
prologue of inexistence before the big bang, viewers are arguably
witnessing the first monolith: we are staring straight at it, up close. The
Samuel 37 film screen is a transformative novum, edifying and enlightening us.
While the blackness is indistinguishable at first, this is the only method in
which Kubrick can ascertainably display mathematical infinitude and the
monolith’s sublime power.
Bookending 2001 is the final “Beyond the Infinite” sequence,
which includes the psychedelic Stargate and Victorian holding cell scenes,
is only represented in a way that can consciously comprehend the Kantian
sublime. 2001 structurally shifts from an outwardly drifting physical
odyssey to concluding in an introspective journey because of Kubrick’s
paradoxical realization of conscious limitation. Bowman’s journey is still
only cinematic or fictional representations of mathematical infinitude.
Even when Kubrick’s meditation on the Kantian sublime drift toward
spiritual transcendence, as in Bowman’s final trek through the slit-scan
sequenced Stargate, it is represented by geometric patterns and inverted
color spectrums; the last sector of the Stargate are merely
photographically-negative landscapes. These are the only representative
options available for mathematical infinitude to be grasped by the human
consciousness. At the time of filming, photographical evidence of
supernovas, galaxy formations, and comets were limited, leaving Kubrick
to achieve adequate representations through other means: from
microscopic sperm and zygote slides to slow-motion paint splatters.
When Bowman ultimately arrives at the extraterrestrial holding
cell depicted as a strangely Victorian-set antechamber, Kubrick
Samuel 38 demonstrates humanity’s inability and futile attempt to fully comprehend
the mathematical sublime. Time passes exponentially despite our
understanding, decades passing in minutes. The pastoral windows
displaying nature are still-lifes and perhaps criticize our feeble attempt to
encapsulate the entirety of nature. Even the light is artificial, as they are
no windows or doors; Bowman is dependent on the extraterrestrial entity
to perceive the Kantian sublime. Bowman, as a representative ambassador
of humanity, has a fragile grasp of life and nature. This is most evidently
displayed when Bowman dines on another monotonous dinner, and
accidentally smashes a crystal glass to the floor. Bowman requires the
arrival of the last monolith at the edge of his deathbed to move beyond
human consciousness and into that of a “starchild,” of whom can
comprehend the concept of infinitude, if only as a cosmic infant.
Samuel 39 Chapter 4:
Archetypal Psychology and Jungian Limitations
There is always a moment in fiction or film when one character
must explain an anomaly to another. If it is a mystery, perhaps they
recount leading events or revelatory clues; if it’s educational, a simplified
explanation is given as if one’s speaking to a toddler. Whichever the case,
there is usually a point of reference for comparison. Readers and viewers
accept this story mechanic as the norm, even a clichéd marker of a major
plot shift. After all, most may not be well versed in quantum theory or the
fundamentals of nuclear physics. Yet what about the first characters to do
this, those who first elucidated new scientific notions to someone without
the points of reference available today? How do we define these fictive
frontiersmen providing the archetypal model to follow?
Firstly, an understanding of archetypes is requisite. Archetypes are
a well-recognized idea in psychology, which has translated to how we
identify character personalities in literature. The term "archetype" has its
origins in ancient Greek with root words archein meaning "original or
old" and typos meaning "pattern, model or type." The combined meaning
is an "original pattern" of which all other similar persons, objects, or
concepts are derived, copied, modeled, or emulated. Archetypes garnered
great promotion by famous psychologist, Carl Gustav Jung, who
employed the concept to explain thought patterns in the human psyche.
Samuel 40 Through universal and fundamental mythic personas, Jung believed
archetypes derived from past collective experiences and is present in an
individual unconscious. While we will not dissect the innumerable
archetypes currently categorized (the Hero, the Shadow, the Self, the
Anima, the Mother, the Outlaw, etc.), it is important to note that
archetypes are widely considered to be of an “unconscious influence.”
This idea of “unconscious influence” is critical when we extend
archetypal understanding to literature, and becomes directly problematic
to SF. Jungian archetypes provide a foundation for psychological
development, upon which an individual can manifest stronger,
individualized, and more dynamic characteristics. But never is it
mentioned how an archetype can develop truly dynamic and unique
characteristics. If a new genre merely employs and recycles archetypes
with a preceding genre’s traits, how can "new" archetypes form?
According to Jungian psychology, all archetypes are umbilical tied
to the genre preceding (i.e. Medieval characteristics from Biblical,
Elizabethan from Medieval, Victorian from Elizabethan, Gothic from
Victorian, and Science Fiction from Gothic). If archetypes are
“unconsciously influenced,” then how can a new genre like SF ever be
truly independent if its inhabitants are fictional vagrants from other
genres? More so, how do we identify “new” archetypes without
symbiotically relating to their predecessors?
Samuel 41 For instance, the dominant archetype in SF is the mad scientist, but
surely characters of this association have existed before. “Mad” in this
connotation implies nonconventional thinking, much like the “mad
women” of Victorian novels, where domestic rebelliousness was deemed
psychotic or feeble-minded within the patriarchal system. “Scientist” was
a title established after the Industrial Enlightenment, yet is now tethered to
forward-thinking revolutionaries of previous lore: figures that ventured to
discover, experiment, and validate their innovative claims. Many ancient
archetypes wielded esoteric knowledge: shamans, witches and witch
doctors were revered and feared for their misunderstood abilities to
conjure, challenge God directly, and threaten to dismantle religious
institutions. Scientists shared many of the same perceived characteristics
such as eccentric behavior, introversion, and the alchemic ability to create
life. Perhaps the closest figure in Western mythology to the modern mad
scientist was Greek craftsman, Daedalus, creator of the labyrinth, who was
then imprisoned by King Minos on the island of Crete with his son, Icarus.
To escape, Daedalus invented two pairs of wings made from feathers and
beeswax, one for himself and the other for Icarus. While Daedalus himself
managed to fly to safety, Icarus flew too close to the sun, which melted the
wings’ wax, casting him down into the sea below. Scientists and inventors
of the modern era have also retroactively contributed to the development
of common tropes surrounding the mad scientist. Nikola Tesla in his later
years conceptualized a so-called "death ray" (a directed energy weapon)
Samuel 42 and was sensationalized in the media as a prototypical “mad scientist” for
his proposal. Yet while Victor Frankenstein can be generally characterized
as a scientist, his ideas revolutionary and unique, he was neither mad in
the mythic or Victorian Gothic sense. His innovation stemmed from logic
and scientific methodology, a distinction of which no characters before
him grasped so deftly. Nor did relative protagonists take the time to
explain their methodology’s as clearly and effective as in Frankenstein.
Genremorphs and Creation Anxiety
All new genres, through their first literary ventures, create one
purposefully conscious archetype: the genremorph. The term is neologized
from the Greek genos (genus, genre) and the Greek morphē (shape, mold).
This consciousness and hyperawareness promotes a unique and original
status of which all new genre archetypes can augment. Genremorphs often
act as a mouthpiece for an author's commentary or concerns upon entering
a new genre. Since the author is operating in an unnamed new genre, of
which the rules and laws are still being established, they often funnel their
concerns through genremorphs in reflective monologues and pedantic
discourse. Examples outside Science Fiction would include Sherlock
Holmes and Modern Crime Fiction, The Epic of Gilgamesh and Fantasy
Adventure, or The Castle of Otranto’s Manfred and Gothic Horror.
Samuel 43 If most archetypes live in a house of “unconscious influence,”
oblivious to those watching from outside the windows, a genremorph
dwells on the porch and breaks the fourth wall to communicate directly
with the audience on its new found home. Genremophs are only archetypal
in that they provide a model for future characters, yet primarily act as an
ambassador evangelizing for flourishing genres to convey defining tenets,
endorse narrative autonomy, and to converse directly about a genre's
intentions.
While archetypes associate with redundancy, or a recycling of
character traits, they exist to provide a catalytic framework for change;
they are creature from older architecture, but refurbished into new
structures. Jung elaborates: “The archetype strongly activates and provides
a meaningful transition ... with a 'rite of passage' from one stage of life to
the next." (Jung 72). Thus, archetypes prepare a transition, say from
Victorian Gothic to Science Fiction, but it’s the vital genremorph who first
populates the new genre.
Frankenstein’s major dilemma for its genremorphs, Victor
Frankenstein and his Monster, is that man conflicts with his quest for
knowledge. Victor initially champions the pursuit, but immediately
questions the result upon the Monster’s creation. Shelley interjects her
own interpretations of how the scientific pursuit is relevant, not just only
to the future of literature, but to her personal life and plight. Victor
explains, “I had often, when at home, thought it hard to remain during my
Samuel 44 youth cooped up in one place and had longed to enter the world and take
my station among other human beings” (30). M. Krempe, Victor’s
professor of natural philosophy, further decries his student’s initial
pursuits, declaring, “You have burdened your memory with exploded
systems and useless names.” (31). Shelley contemplates the explosion of
such an established system when Victor honestly insists:
Learn from me, if not by my precepts, at least by my example, how
dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge and how much happier
that man is who believes his native town to be the world, than he
who aspires to be greater than his nature will allow. (39)
While Victor aspires to possess the greatest knowledge, he is
extraordinarily weak emotionally, perhaps like Shelley as a young writer.
She continues via Victor, elaborating further:
Nothing is more painful to the human mind than, after the feelings
have been worked up by a quick succession of events, the dead
calmness of inaction and certainty which follows and deprives the
soul both of hope and fear…This state of mind preyed upon my
health, which had perhaps never entirely recovered from the first
shock it had sustained. I shunned the face of man; all sound of joy
or complacency was torture to me; solitude was my only
consolation — deep, dark, deathlike solitude. (77)
The Monster explains that the “Increase of knowledge only
discovered to me more clearly what a wretched outcast I was” (119).
Samuel 45 Shelley’s fear of her own created product is commonly referred to as
creation anxiety. Defined by Søren Kierkegaard in Concept of Anxiety
(1844), creation anxiety elucidates the emotional distress presented by
Shelley’s desire to break from convention. Shelley evidently conceives
herself as a Victor Frankenstein and her text as her monster. Shelley’s
1831 preface goes as far to begin with a justification of her own work as
an author. Pesponding to a question Shelley had often been asked since
Frankenstein’s original publication thirteen years prior, she questions:
“How I, then a young girl, came to think of, and to dilate upon, so very
hideous an idea?” This question reflects a range of early nineteenthcentury British expectations upon young girls that Shelley challenged with
Frankenstein’s publication. In the preface, Mary Shelley details writing a
short initial draft of Frankenstein to appease Percy Shelley’s constant
prodding. While desiring to follow her parents’ literary fame, Shelley
confesses reluctance to take the first steps toward serious literature and
admits her previous literary creations were not of the sort to earn her a
literary reputation, being largely private and unpublished or simply
“castles in the air,” waking dreams that served as a substitute for a dull
reality (Rovira 4).
Shelley felt lost in the shadow of her father’s, mother’s, and future
husband’s literary reputations. Her authorship promised creative freedom,
loomed over her entire life, and manifested itself in a parallel construction
in Frankenstein as “the pale student of unhallowed arts”:
Samuel 46 My imagination, unbidden, possessed and guided me, gifting the
successive images that arose in my mind with a sudden vividness
far beyond the usual bonds of reverie. I saw – with shut eyes, but
acute mental vision – I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts
kneeling beside the thing he had put together. […] His success
would terrify the artist; he would rush away from his odious
handiwork, horror-stricken. […] I opened [my eyes] in terror.
(Preface, 24)
Shelley’s contradictory desires, the desire to break with convention by
publishing Frankenstein, and the desire to simultaneously push the novel
away from herself rather than dominate it, as Victor simultaneously
desired to create the monster then pushed him away from himself once
created, is exemplary of Kierkegaardian sympathetic antipathy and
antipathetic sympathy; simultaneous fear and desire expressed toward the
same object, the object provoking anxiety (Rovira 5). Frankenstein thus
becomes Shelley’s imaginative reconstruction of her own projected future
after the novel’s publication. Shelley’s fear of her own hideous progeny is
fear of becoming an alienated author.
Kubrick, on the other hand, had less doubt and more assertion
about his science fictional intentions in 2001. His creation anxiety did not
indulge the fear of filming a scientifically accurate narrative, but focused
on humanity’s parasitic reliance on external and technological forces for
evolutionary transformation; Kubrick posited on humanity technological
Samuel 47 dependence and wondered if our species was truly special or merely apes
with a few more parlor tricks?
2001 operated on many literary aspects well established in SF for
over a century, including the realization of novums in space travel, AI
(HAL9000), and the aforementioned “philosophical interludes” mentioned
by Aldiss that are representative by the monoliths leading Bowman’s
odyssey. Yet the film had few cinematic references. Many of 2001’s
predecessors harkened the bombastic pulp of the 1920s-1950s:
intellectually devoid fare that relied more upon special effects and
fantastical gimmicky that only feigned a science fictional form through
clunky robotics, distant lands, and melodramatic plots and acting. Kubrick
wanted to create an awesome, immersive experience—most of the
captions for 2001’s marketing campaign included the varied phrasing of
“an epic drama of adventure and exploration"— but he was more so
consciously exploring the SF genre itself, and not just entertaining an
intensive technical exercise. 2001, especially the ending, offers multiple
perspectives and self-conscious awareness: the primary genremorph,
David Bowman, inhabits multiple selves as he grows older, becoming
wiser and more patient, and even technically through Kubrick’s use of
fourth wall shots, as when Bowman in his deathbed reaches out to the
monolith.
As per Kubrick’s investigation of humanity and technology’s
synergistic relationship, he positions an antagonism between men and
Samuel 48 machine, yet never concretely sides on one entity being better than the
other. While HAL, Kubrick’s second and antithetical genremorph, is
presented as antagonistic, the AI’s malevolence is diluted by logic and
renders the viewer’s empathy difficult: does HAL psychotically eliminate
the crew and disobey Bowman by his own conscious choice and to
advance his own autonomy; or does HAL malfunction due to human error
in his programmed logarithm rationalization? Paradoxically, Bowman
both feuds with and requires HAL (and all of Discovery One’s
technologies and space pods) to survive. The monoliths are an advanced
form of HAL, yet they are positioned as beneficial. Kubrick vacillates
between man and machine’s complex relationship, and recognizes this
interdependency in a 1968 Playboy interview with editor and author Eric
Nordern shortly after the release of 2001:
There’s no doubt that we’re entering a mechanarchy, however, and
that our already complex relationship with our machinery will
become even more complex as machines become more and more
intelligent. Eventually, we will have to share this planet with
machines whose intelligence and abilities surpass our own. But the
interrelationship—if intelligently managed by man—could have an
immeasurably enriching effect on society. Looking into the distant
future, I suppose it’s not inconceivable that a semi-sentient robotcomputer subculture could evolve that might one day decide it no
longer needed man. (Phillips 24)
Samuel 49 When asked further about his own creation anxiety and the necessity to
perpetuate humanity’s existence, Kubrick states:
Our ability, unlike the other animals, to conceptualize our own
mortality creates tremendous psychic strains within us…in each
man’s chest a tiny ferret of fear at this ultimate knowledge gnaws
away at his ego and his sense of purpose…[and] if man really sat
back and thought about his impending termination and his
terrifying insignificance and aloneness in the cosmos, he would
surely go mad, or succumb to a numbing sense of futility. (Phillips
25)
It’s evident that futility is Kubrick’s largest concern: if we can create or
make contact with something better than us, than what is our purpose
other than to pursue more knowledge? At what point do we gain
independence and reach our potential?
HAL talks about employing his capacities to the fullest extent, that
“it is the only thing that any conscious entity can hope to do.” HAL can
only do so because of Bowman, and Bowman and crew can only venture
into the beyond through technical and scientific means. Both the human
and mechanized genremorphs in 2001 (HAL and Bowman) succeed in
addressing such an existential crisis.
Conclusion:
Science Fiction and Sipstream
Samuel 50 Author and editor Damon Knight summed up the difficulty of
defining SF by stating, "Science Fiction is what we point to when we say
it.” This definition was echoed by author Mark C. Glassy, who
humorously added his own spin by likening SF to pornography: “It
exploits the normal, seemingly wrong at first, and while you don’t know
quite what it is, you realize why it must exist.” (James 3). Considering its
inherent vulnerability to subjectivity, SF exists like a rare transitional form
as literature’s platypus: a grotesque freak of nature, yet a sublime
demonstration of evolutionary principles. The strangeness of SF stems
from its architectural infinitude. SF constructs worlds that do not yet exist,
and unlike basic dramas or comedies, is mandated by the mission to
discover: the genre exists for mutability. If anything, science fiction is
symptomatic of change in cultural sensibility and is as profound as the
advent of The Renaissance.
While Asimov came obscurely close to defining SF as a “literature
of ideas,” my offering would contest it’s closer to a literature of constant
change. Each entry into SF alters its definition slightly. Like our own
primate ancestry, we cannot view its evolution fully, but know of its
origins with an embryonic understanding. After all, SF has only been a
fully formed genre for a couple of centuries, and it too influencing new
emerging genres.
Samuel 51 American SF author, Bruce Sterling, coined the term “Slipstream”
in 1989 for a genre movement arguably motivated by Carter Scholz’s
observation that the “brain-dead” science fiction of the latter 20th century
had lost the opportunity to become worthy literature and was incapable of
reclaiming any literary significance (Harrington 2). Originally, the term
Slipstream was meant to encapsulate a contemporary writing whose very
heart was anchored against reality: fantastic, surreal, illogical and with a
postmodern sensibility; it arose as a bastard son of SF that diluted
plausibility in favor of an increased cognitive estrangement that
“sarcastically tears at the structure of everyday life.” (Harrington 3). Most
of Slipstream’s working cannon includes latter 20th century writers: Franz
Kafka, Kurt Vonnegut, J.G. Ballard, Jorge Luis Borges, Thomas Pynchon,
Virginia Woolf, and Ursula K. Leguin. Slipstream, like postmodernism,
primarily aims its questions toward identity, meaning, and representation;
it acts as a “kind of fantastic or non-realistic fiction that crosses
conventional genre boundaries between science fiction/fantasy and
mainstream literary fiction.” (Chu 78).
This topic is relevant to exemplify that future genres will encounter
the same problem as SF’s search for definitive autonomy. Like
Frankenstein’s Monster, all future fiction will be interstitial creatures.
Perhaps the chronology of fiction is so long, esteemed, and canonically
entrenched that it becomes impossible to separate the past from future.
Uniqueness as a literary form becomes more difficult to attain. While
Samuel 52 Clute and Nicholl’s haphazard resignation to the irresolution of an SF
definition should still be ignored, they do raise awareness to fiction’s
appetite toward variance, as it will always be forced to adopt change
according to sociopolitical and artistic influences. But as it’s been made
evident, SF has two works in Frankenstein and 2001 that are stalwarts for
the genre, providing the simple rubric below for future referential
categorization:
An SF narrative is dictated by a plausible novum, validated by
current scientific logic, that discusses both the material novelty
and its ethical, moral, and sociopolitical repercussions.
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